After losing a congressional bid and serving as a top strategist on Hillary Clinton’s disastrous 2016 campaign, Amanda Renteria is running for governor.

By NTK Staff | 02.15.2018 @12:15pm

Amanda Renteria, a former candidate for Congress and aide to Hillary Clinton, is reportedly running for governor of California.

Renteria, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2014 as a Democrat in California’s 21st Congressional District and served as political director on Hillary Clinton’s losing 2016 presidential campaign, filed a statement of intent to run for governor in the country’s most populous state.

The 43-year-old Renteria has not put out an official statement, and the Los Angeles Times was unable to reach her for comment. She does not have a campaign website “or any apparent staff.”

Most recently, Renteria was serving in the California attorney general’s office under former Rep. Xavier Becerra, who did confirm Renteria is stepping down from that role to run for governor.

“I just don’t get it,” said Rose Kapolczynski, a Democratic strategist and top advisor to former Sen. Barbara Boxer. “You can’t enter the governor’s race in a state the size of California four months before the election and expect to win, unless she has a secret bank account with $100 million in it.”

The Times listed a whole host of complications that Renteria’s nascent campaign will face:

Jumping in late: California’s gubernatorial primary will be held on June 5, meaning Renteria has less than four months to mount a successful campaign.

Lack of name ID: Renteria is “not familiar face to the state’s voters,” The Times wrote.

Money: At this late stage, most donors have backed other candidates, hampering Renteria’s ability to catch up in the money race. She will need enormous amounts of money to get her name ID up in a state with numerous expensive TV markets.

No staff: Renteria loyalists from her unsuccessful 2014 campaign “are working for other campaigns,” according to The Times.

Angering other Democrats: One of Renteria’s former advisers called Renteria a “spoiler” for jumping in the race; a former Obama aide working for a super PAC that is backing another candidate in the race said it would be “very difficult to mount a new serious campaign” at this stage.

Is Renteria’s bid an earnest, underdog campaign to win the governorship, or a political ploy to raise her name ID in the state for a subsequent statewide bid down the road? Time will tell, but it’s clear few California Democrats are taking this campaign seriously for the time being.